Monday, October 8, 2012

Amish influence

I realized looking at some of my older quilts that I have been heavily influenced by Amish quilts.I have always loved their simplicity of design and the striking contrast of solid colors that older traditional Amish Quilts use.It may be one of the reasons that I started hand dying my own fabrics to emulate the rich and saturated colors that some of those quilts use.This little miniature quilt was made with some of my early hand dyed fabrics and accented with two wonderful old Marimekko fabrics. I remember I barely had enough to do the squares and the binding with the black fabric.This little quilt was constructed on 1/4” graph paper and paper pieced. It measures 12” x 12”. and has hand quilting in the border.Amish SquaresSeveral years ago there was a wonderful exhibit at the Illinois State Museum in southern IL, entitled Illinois Amish Quilts. Laura and I drove down to view it. I was inspired by one of the crib quilts in that show to piece this wall quilt.Again this was constructed with some of my early hand dyed fabrics.For my book Fabric to Dye For, I created this quiltAmish LeavesThis is an all fused quilt made with one set of 12 blackened gradation squares. It was challenging and fun to make.

Looking at these quilts make me what to work this way again. I guess it is good to revisit things from time to time.